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Flour is an essential ingredient for making bread. And while it’s tempting to settle for the cheapest brand at the store, you need to consider more than just price. You also need to know what you’re buying.
There are different types of flour, but not all are suitable for bread making. And depending on which you select, it significantly impacts your bread’s taste, texture, and nutritional values.
Most people think that any flour will do for baking bread, but that is not necessarily true. This is why, in this article, I’ll lecture you on the types of flour and why they’re suitable for baking bread.
Types Of Flour For Bread
1. All-Purpose Flour
All-purpose flour, also known as plain flour, is one of the most common flours used in baking bread. It is an excellent option since it’s affordable, versatile, and easy to find.
All-purpose flour is typically made of wheat but can also come from rye and barley.
The flour has a high protein content, which means it can absorb more liquid than other types of dry ingredients, which makes it easy to work with when making bread and pasta.
It will help your bread rise higher and more evenly while keeping your baked goods from sticking together during the baking process.
This means that your bread will come out of the oven more evenly shaped instead of having big chunks of dough stuck together by the outside edges (which often happens with other types of flour).
2. Bread Flour
Bread flour sits prevalently amongst the most commonly used flour. It’s made from hard wheat and has a mild flavor, making it an excellent choice for bread, cakes, muffins, and other baked goods.
You can even use it in place of all-purpose flour.
But unlike all-purpose flour, it contains more gluten and is higher in protein by about 12% to 14%, making it more durable and extensible as you work with it (like when you knead your dough).
On top of that, this helps form light-textured bread. However, it requires more liquid since it has more gluten content.
Bread flour is ideal not just for bread but for any type of bread recipe, be it hearty sourdoughs, tender brioche, cinnamon rolls, bagels, pretzels, or lacy English muffins, but not Irish pancakes!).
The key benefit of using it is that you’ll never have to worry about getting your gluten levels just before you begin working with dough —it will always be strong enough because it is from hard wheat!
3. Whole Wheat Flour
Whole wheat flour is 100% whole grain wheat. It’s the most nutritious and complete wheat flour you can buy.
That said, it has more protein, fiber, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants than any other type of flour. Using this flour in your baking recipes gives your body all the nutrients needed to stay healthy.
The flavors are intensely nutty and can vary from fine to coarse textures that create chewy, crusted bread.
In most cases, the hulls damage the gluten strands since the flour is not as finely ground as all-purpose or bread flour.
On the contrary, you can use whole wheat flour for almost any bread—from pizza dough and cinnamon buns to bagels and muffins.
But it’s specifically good at making dense and hearty bread like flatbreads or pitas that won’t fall apart when sliced or torn into pieces.
4. White Whole Wheat Flour
White whole wheat flour is a type of whole wheat flour that is made from whole wheat kernels, but the outer part of the grain.
It has a lighter color than regular whole wheat flour but is milder and still has all the nutrients and fiber of regular whole wheat flour.
This flour has around 12% gluten, making it a good substitute for all-purpose flour usage with no loss in light texture.
White whole wheat flour can be used in many recipes, including bread! Moreover, they are lower in carbs and fats than regular whole wheat flour.
This means that if you’re trying to cut down on carbohydrates or increase your intake of healthy fats, then switching to white whole wheat may be right for you!
5. Pastry Flour
Pastry flour is worth the try if you want to make bread sticks. It’s also perfect for pie crusts, cakes, pancakes, muffins, and biscuits.
Although the flour is only 8% to 9% of protein content, which makes it falls between all-purpose flour and cake flour.
On the bright side, it perfectly balances flakiness (suitable for pastry) and tenderness (best in desserts).
6. Almond Flour
YES, Almond flour!
Almond flour is an excellent substitute for regular flour in baking bread.
It is made from ground-blanched almonds, which means that they’ve been soaked in water to remove some of the fats and proteins that make almond flour taste bitter when not processed correctly.
In addition, almond flour has a higher protein content than wheat flour, which is why it can be used to make bread that’s higher in protein.
The flour also helps to keep the gluten content lower, making your bread more nutritious. Plus, it makes everything taste better!
And aside from the bread, you can use it for making cookies, pancakes, muffins, and biscuits.
7. 00 Flour
00 flour is one I’ll NEVER count out, especially when making flatbreads or thin crust pizza dough.
This flour is an Italian-style flour; Flour is made from hard wheat, which has a high protein content of about 11 to 12 percent.
And the “00” refers to the flour’s extremely fine texture, which is ideal for rolling out skinny pasta and crackers without breaking.
8. Tapioca Flour
Tapioca flour is made from the root of the cassava plant. It is also used in creating gluten-free items like bread, pasta, and even pizza bases. The uses of this flour go beyond desserts and cookies, though.
When used in baking, tapioca flour yields a thick and gummy result, which is why it’s best used to make Brazilian cheese bread.
Besides that, it has excellent absorption properties. Therefore, it can double up as a thickening agent for sauces, gravies, soups, pie fillings, and dressings, and it even helps give fried food a nice crisp crust.
Conclusion
When choosing flour for baking bread, you must consider not just which type of flour works best for the recipe but what kind of wheat was used to make the flour.
Whole grains or wheat make great bread flour, and you know it.
You should also have it at the back of your mind that each flour is a different protein content—high or low. So you need to know the protein content in each flour for your region to ensure baking success.
